Or maybe not. How long had it been in making? The size of the task ahead of Jilo pressed down on Senrid, making it hard to breathe. No, he could breathe. It was more that he had to think about breathing, that he was aware of all the potential pain his body could be in if he moved wrong. His joints seemed ill-fitted, his skin tender in a way he couldn’t describe.
It was a relief when he found himself sucked away and deposited in Keriam’s room, where he collapsed onto the floor, head on his knees as his ears roared.
When he looked up, the air in the familiar office smelled sweeter than spring, light as noon, though the sun was weak behind streaky clouds, and low in the sky.
“What a life.” He enjoyed the miracle of easy breathing. “Next time I whine about things here, remind me of Chwahirsland.”
Keriam did not comment on how very little Senrid whined. “Did you complete your task?”
Senrid made a flat gesture with his hand. “Not even close. But we got a start. The rest is up to Jilo. I think he knows what to do. Better than I. He knows the territory.” Then his mood changed. “Let’s go watch those seniors, and I can pretend I don’t see their fathers glaring at me because I won’t let them kill their civilians whenever they get a blister or a bellyache. Hah!”
Chapter Fourteen
JILO was startled when he noticed that Senrid was gone. A brief pulse of gratitude made him look around to make sure. Jilo wanted to thank Senrid not only for the spell, but for illuminating a hitherto shadowy path of magical logic. He knew what to do, now. It felt so . . . so steadying—was that the right word?—to know what to do.
He straightened up, aware of a sense of malaise sapping at his vitality. After carefully pulling out the last book he had tested, so he could find his place again, he sighted the door, and walked out. It was like walking through . . . fog. No, fog didn’t resist you, cold and wet as it might feel.
He noticed the farther he got from the magic chambers, the more easily he moved; one floor down, and he encountered servants. The two he saw looked at him fearfully, one jumping as if prodded.
“Any orders?”
“A meal,” Jilo said. “Bring it here.”
“A meal?” the young one asked, eyes wide. “Here?”
“Is there a standing order against meals brought here?” The stink of fear was almost as bad as the magical malaise. “Until Wan-Edhe returns,” Jilo forced the hated words out, “I will have meals here.”
The young one bowed, hands out to his sides and open, as Wan-Edhe had required, showing no weapon. With his head bowed like that, Jilo could see the roundness of his face beneath the pallor and haggardness that marked everyone in the castle. He didn’t look all that much older than Jilo himself. Was he worrying about what was going to happen?
Jilo hesitated, then ventured a new idea. “I will be making an inspection, to be ready for Wan-Edhe’s return.”
Was that relief? Yes. Routine was steadying, and the order clear. And readying the castle for inspection would keep everyone busy.
The meal arrived, and the boiled grain with cabbage and dried fish was as tasteless as the Shadowland food Jilo had eaten all his life. However, it did what it was supposed to do. Or maybe it was the thinner air downstairs. When he returned to the magic chambers, he did not immediately take up the task of checking for traps on the books, but explored the other chambers. There was little to find.
Then he remembered the anteroom off the throne, the one Wan-Edhe had always kept locked to anyone but himself and his dungeon master. Jilo went downstairs to discover the throne room empty and cold. Kwenz must have removed most of the spells on the anteroom door while executing a fetch order from his brother, for there was only a stone spell on the latch, easy to remove.
The room beyond had a table, in the center of which sat a plain wooden frame with what looked like black slate inside it. At the left and right of this framed slate were polished scry stones, each with flickers of movement inside. All different.
Jilo bent over the nearest, trying to see what was going on. He brushed his fingers over the top of the stone to remove a thin layer of dust, and found himself staring at the inside of one of the guard command centers. This time he kept his fingers on the scry stone and heard voices.
“. . . I tell you, just fit them in.”
“But we are already overcrowded.”
“Not down the coast. They’re all undermanned.”
“Under leaky roofs, without beds or supplies. What are they going to do with two thousand extra mouths to feed and bodies to house?”
The Shadowland Chwahir were already here! ‘Already’? He’d lost eight months upstairs.
“Do you really want to ask for clarification of orders?”
The youngest said, “If he’s truly gone, I will.”
They all looked around on the word ‘he.’
Then the oldest said, “I’ll wager a neckin he’s watching you right now.”
Jilo said, “Neckin?”
In the command room, all three jumped as if they’d been stabbed. Jilo almost found it funny, except the yellowish fear in their faces was not at all funny.
The three straightened up. One said, “May we request clarification of orders?”
Jilo remembered the relief in the runner’s face. “Carry out as specified. But you are to send orders across the land. Everyone ready for inspection. That includes a list of necessary repairs.”
Hands snapped out, palms bare, fingers stiff. “It shall be done.” Though already the three commanders were worrying about what ‘necessary’ might mean, and what would happen if they interpreted the word incorrectly.
Jilo touched the scry stone, and a different room appeared. Another touch, a different room. Of course Wan-Edhe would have spent months, maybe years, setting up this elaborate spy system. As for ‘neckin,’ it obviously was slang.
Jilo stretched out his hand to return to the first room. He could listen to what they said about their orders . . .
No. If he did that once, he’d do it again. And again. And he’d never stop. The words flowed through his head, feeling like an argument. Against whom? There was a sense in his chest, like . . . like a beating was nigh. Like Wan-Edhe was watching. Like . . . threat. He couldn’t characterize it beyond that.
So he ran out of the room, pausing only to restore the stone spell. No one should be in that chamber, that much seemed sensible.
As he returned upstairs, he thought about slang, and how he’d known pretty much all the Shadowland slang, but that didn’t mean the warriors here shared the same slang, though they shared a language.
Comfort. The slang he knew had to do with sneaking ways to get better food, better everything. Ways around the rules. And of course the shorthand for various punishments.
We Chwahir have to sneak to get comfort, he thought grimly.
He left the thought behind. He used one of the secret passageways to reach the magic chamber, and got to work.
* * *
Senrid had discovered that even when he was deeply asleep, some part of his mind was awake and aware enough to sense subtle changes.
Something broke into his dreams. When he was small, one of his survival habits had been to remain lying still, his breathing even, when his uncle stole into his room to see if he slept or was conspiring, and later, to attempt magical spells that Senrid had managed to spy out and so had already warded; the only reason he was still here was because the regent had been a terrible mage, and hadn’t taken the time to study to become a better one.
Senrid lay still except for one hand. His heartbeat crowded his throat as his fingers wormed under his pillow to close on the hilt of the throwing knife he always slept with.
His door opened a crack wider, the hinges noiseless. Whoever opened it slipped inside equally noiselessly, except he couldn’t completely hide the soft sough of breathing.
“Shit.”
The voice cracked. An adolescent voice. This was no sinister Norsundrian spy mage, and anyway a Norsundrian would set off tracers.
Senrid snapped his fingers, lighting the glowglobes, and stared as Jarend Ndarga grimaced, yanked the dagger out of his bicep, then sank onto Senrid’s trunk. “Your aim stinks,” he said with a fair attempt at a steady voice.
“Didn’t aim for the heart. Shoulder,” Senrid said, with no attempt at hiding his shaky voice.
“Then your aim still stinks.” Ndarga grimaced. “Why don’t you have bodyguards?”
“Not going to live like my uncle, always expecting assassins,” Senrid said.
“I’m not an assassin,” Ndarga retorted in somewhat breathy outrage, his hand clapped tightly over his arm. “If I wanted a fight, it would be—”
“I know, I know, according to the rules,” Senrid said, his heart still hammering as he rolled out of bed and reached for his clothes. “Here.” He pulled a winter scarf from his bureau and tossed it to Ndarga, who wrapped it around his dripping arm as Senrid yanked on yesterday’s trousers and shirt. “So why are you snaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night?”
The look of acute pain that Ndarga shot at Senrid came from something other than a dagger puncture, nasty as that was. Ndarga’s surface emotions were like a hammer inside Senrid’s skull—regret, anger, anxiety—causing Senrid to wince, and tighten his mental shield.
It took him a few breaths to resist the almost overwhelming temptation to delve behind those surface emotions, but he controlled it. He wasn’t good enough not to risk being detected, and he knew how very angry, justifiably angry, that would make Ndarga.
So he said, “Come on. My study is right down the hall.”
A short time later, Ndarga hunched on a guest mat, a heavy mug in his hands containing a healthy dose of the sometimes double- or even triple-distilled liquor called bristic, made from rye, with a blend of almond and pepper.
He sipped, blinked rapidly, and some of the blue shade vanished from his lips. Senrid loathed the taste of bristic almost as much as he hated the blurring effect of alcohol, but he knew it could help blunt pain. Listerblossom or green kinthus would be better, but he’d have to send for those, and he sensed Ndarga wanted to keep this interview private.
Ndarga let out a long, ragged sigh, glanced distractedly at the crimson-splashed scarf he’d knotted around his arm, then looked up. “Nothing happened.”
Senrid knew exactly what that meant. All these months had passed, with Ndarga neither penalized nor singled out in any way; he was now beginning his two-year stint serving in the city guard with the rest of last year’s senior class.
Senrid said, “Won’t. Like I said.”
“You took away capital rights from the jarls.”
“Not completely. Decisions to execute anyone have to be reviewed,” Senrid said. “It’s not new. The Senrid-Harvaldar I’m named for introduced it when my family got back to the throne five centuries ago. My father reintroduced it under the new regs.” When Ndarga raised his hand to speak, Senrid said, “Yes, I know I’m not my father. Underage. Never went through the academy, and you know why.”
Ndarga looked away. Then he said, “If I tell you something, will it be a capital case?”
Senrid sighed. “How can I know that before I know what it is?”
“Still. It’s about my father,” Ndarga said. “I’m not going to rat if it will get him put up against the wall.”
There again was the impulse to sift through Jarend Ndarga’s thoughts, but doing so was like trying to swim in a weed-choked lake, while being screamed at and burned and frozen by the person’s emotions. And, of course, Liere would say it was wrong.
Senrid said, “I won’t promise anything I don’t know about first.”
Ndarga let out his breath, trying to think clearly in spite of the throbbing pain. One thing he was sure of. If the king had agreed immediately, he wouldn’t have believed it.
Neither understood the other, and so they sat there like that, at an impasse, until Senrid said, “You came in here. I didn’t yelp for the guard. So speak your piece, or let me get back to sleep. And you better get that wrapped properly in any case.”
Ndarga spoke reluctantly, as if each word was yanked out of him the way he’d pulled the dagger from his arm. “My father. And the Jarl of Waldevan. Others if he can get them. I think Torac will also ride, as he owes my father for our help against the Gorse Gang—horse raiders—on the border two years ago. First thaw, they’re moving to take the coast back.” He raised a hand. “They know they won’t be able to keep it, that there are international treaties that separated off the Rualese. But if you have to defend that treaty, which only benefits outsiders, then they mean to force you back to the old ways, before you can raise the rest of the kingdom.”
“Which old ways would those be? The ones under my uncle, with executions and floggings any time he didn’t like someone’s expression? Or my grandfather, who got us into two wars, which resulted in that same treaty being made by every other kingdom ganging up against us?” Senrid retorted cordially, and as Ndarga just shook his head miserably, Senrid sighed. “Forget that. I know what it is. They want to be petty kings again. But it isn’t going to happen while I’m alive.”
Ndarga got to his feet. “If you win. Exile him, or all of us, if you think that’s fair. Whole family. You’ll probably want to give Methden to someone new, and I get that, how it works. I hope it goes to the Senelacs. But don’t execute him.”
Senrid grinned. “The Senelacs probably wouldn’t take it. Jan and Fenis both are ridiculously proud of that stupid old saying that Senelacs are great captains and terrible governors.”
Ndarga ignored this attempt to ease the atmosphere, his hand clutched tightly to his arm. “You still haven’t said. Look, Senrid-Harvaldar, I don’t want my father against the wall. Because I ratted him out.”
Senrid clawed his hair out of his eyes, his mind wheeling uselessly without being able to light anywhere sure. Lying had come easy when he lived under his uncle’s tyranny, and without guilt. Lying fast and well was a survival tool.
The urge to lie shaped his lips, but he forced himself to meet Ndarga’s angry, wary gaze. “I promise you I’m not going to ride down to Methden waving a war banner and order him shot in his own courtyard, on the strength of ‘he might.’ I’ll wait for action. If he breaks capital law, not talks about it, but actually breaks it, then, no promises. How’s that?”
A flick of the fingers. “I can take that.”
“You know,” Senrid couldn’t help adding, “If I end up having to send your father and all his captains into exile, they might make it in Toth, or Telyerhas, but in Perideth, Marlovens are shot on sight.”
“We have relations in Toth,” Ndarga said in a gritty voice.
“Right then. Cut along.” Senrid lifted his hand.
Ndarga cut. Senrid ran back to his room to clean the gore off his dagger, and replace it under the pillow. Then he jumped through his cleaning frame and pulled on socks, boots, and a tunic. As he did, he rapidly made and discarded plans. His first instinct was to race up to Keriam’s tower.
Then he caught himself up short. He had to start acting like a king, instead of running to Keriam, or he may as well hand over the throne.
Senrid ran back to his study and snapped the glowglobes to light.
Chapter Fifteen
SENRID scowled at his desk. He needed more Scouts.
But recruiting the elite group, once known as royal runners before his family regained the throne, and King’s Scouts afterward, was a slow process at best. They had to be trustworthy, vigilant, impartial, smart, and they had to go unnoticed. They had to listen, and be loyal to Marloven
Hess. So far, most of his recruits were women and girls, who he knew would go unnoticed by even the most suspicious jarls.
He had to be careful about their selection and their deployment. Never far from his awareness was the sinister fact that all his uncle’s Scouts (who had been expert spies as well as assassins) had vanished without a trace. Senrid still had no idea what had happened to them. In Marloven Hess, that usually meant they’d been scragged.
It was possible that some had scuttled for the border as soon as the regent was deposed. But all had vanished. Keriam said that argued for concerted action. Senrid found the idea unsettling that someone had the skill to get the drop on them all, as his uncle had recruited his Scouts for their sneakiness as well as their viciousness.
He’d think about Scouts later.
Senrid whirled around and studied the big map on the wall behind his desk, twin to the one in his bedroom. He’d made that map himself, with as much detail as possible. His uncle had thought it a harmless task, not knowing that Senrid had undertaken it to get his own kingdom’s landscape thoroughly into his head.
If Jarend Ndarga was right, the Jarl of Methden was going to invade Enneh Rual. Senrid eyed long, thin Enneh Rual. It was a country that existed only as a result of a treaty, but it would be foolish to overlook the sea-trained hardiness of the folk there, whose ancestors were partly Marloven, and partly Iascan, the fisher folk who’d lived there before Senrid’s ancestors rode a-conquering out of the north.
Senrid had been listening to the seniors talking about command class ever since he was little, and he’d begun testing all his reading against what he heard. When he looked at the map, the strategy seemed obvious. He could even name a couple of battles in which it had been used. If Waldevan took Tarual Harbor, which dominated the bay, and Methden supported him from the southern end, that would secure both population centers, and the rest of Enneh Rual would fall easily.
A Sword Named Truth Page 19
